Drawer cabinets for heavy loads typically include wheels mounted on opposite sides of the drawer and arranged to run on opposed complementary fixed tracks or guides mounted on the inside faces of the opposite sides of the cabinets. Some drawer cabinets have the components reversed with the wheels mounted to the side walls of the cabinet and the tracks or guides mounted to the drawer. However, in both cases, in normal use the drawer cannot be fully drawn from the cabinet because the drawer is support by engagement of the wheels in the tracks or guides and as a result, a significant portion of the drawer remains in the cabinet making access to that portion difficult. The problem is particularly noticeable in drawer cabinets for four wheel drive recreational vehicles and recovery vehicles where limited space is available for a drawer cabinet or drawer cabinets so that the drawer size must be maximised within the cabinet.
Further, it will be appreciated that some equipment is of such a size that while it might fit into a drawer it cannot be put into the drawer unless the whole drawer is accessible from above. Attempts have been made at overcoming the problem of gaining easy access to the whole drawer but they have not been entirely successful. In one such attempt, the drawer includes a fixed track or guide which runs on a wheel mounted to another track which in turn runs on another track which is fixed to the cabinet so that part of the intermediate track can extend beyond the cabinet and the drawer can be supported by the intermediate track. However, while more of the drawer can be accessed more easily than in single track or runner systems, such systems still do not provide full open access.
Another drawer slide system which has been relatively successful in providing better drawer access utilises an intermediate track which slides on bearing balls held in a longitudinal rack which supports the intermediate track over a substantial length. However, in typical rack systems the balls necessarily are arranged to run in grease as they roll along the track and in dusty or dirty conditions the grease becomes impregnated with dirt, sand, water and the like thereby causing damage and jamming the slides. Moreover, even if immediate damage is avoided the balls and the tracks have to be regularly cleaned and regreased to ensure reliability. Additionally, such presently available systems cannot carry the heavy equipment loads required for long range outback 4WD journeys.